For most of the 20th century, the telephone call has been the preferred manner of synchronous (real time) communication between individuals that are remotely located from each other. Also, since almost no one is always available to answer a telephone call, once voice recording technology were sufficiently mature and affordable, the telephone answering machine became a mainstay of modern life. The basic telephone answering machine features typically include: answering a call for an unavailable telephone user, providing a voice greeting to the caller, and recording a message from the caller for later playback by the unavailable user.
More than a hundred years since the invention of the telephone, the telephone call remains the most widely used technology to communicate synchronously over long distances. However, video and text messaging technologies have recently become popular as an alternative to telephonic communication. In particular, video based communication, such as video chat, video messaging, and video conferencing has found wide acceptance among users of the Internet. However, even though video is often the preferred way to remotely communicate over a network between remotely located parties, some of the same issues that led to the development of the telephone answering machine are also impacting the general acceptance of video communication today. For example, until now, if another party was unavailable for video communication at a particular time, it was often impractical to either leave a message for the currently unavailable other party or provide a contextual greeting.